One of the best parts of any awards shows is seeing the reactions of the different nominees. How do the winners handle being honored for their work? Do they walk on stage a complete blubbering mess, or do they stride up to the front of the room with bravado and give a fantastic speech? How do the losing nominees handle seeing that golden statue ripped from their grasp? When there are hundreds of cameras trained on their every facial twitch, there are bound to be some pretty great reaction shots. Here are our top 10 faces and reactions from Emmy winners, losers, and presenters.
Vanessa Williams
Vanessa Williams is cool. I mean, she's just way too cool to be joking around at an award show when she's about to get an Emmy. She's a diva, people! So when Amy Poehler and company devised the goofy gag of wearing various pieces of eyewear while the nominees were being announced, Williams tastefully declined with a look that's a combination of "Hell no am I getting involved with this l foolishness!" and "Where's my Emmy?" while shaking her head dismissively at the camera. She ended up losing to Kristin Chenoweth (at least she went home without wearing an eye patch).
Kristin Chenoweth
Speaking of Chenoweth, her scrunched up face and acceptance speech after her win for Pushing Daisies was simply adorable. Her pixie-like excitement and crocodile tears are just to much to bear. Lines like "I'm unemployed now, so I would like to be on Mad Men" just make the clip even better.
Aaron Paul
Okay so this moment wasn't at the actual awards show, but it's close enough. If you have a pulse, and you've watched at least five minutes of any given episode of Breaking Bad, then you already love Aaron Paul and his character Jesse Pinkman. But someone as likeable as Paul can surprise you time and time again. During the announcement ceremony for the 2013 Emmys, when Paul learned that he has secured yet another Emmy nomination (8:44 in the video), his face contorted into such childlike glee that his excitement is infectious. The fact that he can get so excited over an award he already has won twice before is very endearing.
Sally Fields
In her Emmy win in 2007 for Brothers and Sisters, Sally Fields launched into a tribute to mothers around the globe. With a face full of conviction and passion, she speaks out against war and says the controversial line, "Let's face it. If the mothers ruled the world, there would be no goddamned war in the first place!”
Steve Carell
Let me give you a little backstory first. Ricky Gervais and Steve Carell have had a bit of a rivalry ever since Carell hilariously "stole" Gervais' Emmy the year before. Now cut to 2008, when Gervais demanded his Emmy back and began to tear into Carell with jokes. Even while everyone else in the theater, including Carell's wife, was collapsing back into their chairs with giggle fits, Carell retained his stony visage, never breaking. He could probably withstand the harshest of tortures. Eventually he relinquished the Emmy, but only after fierce comical prodding by Gervais.
Bryan Cranston
After proving to be a comedy workhouse on Malcom in the Middle for six years, it seemed Bryan Cranston would never get the recognition he deserves by the Emmys. Just how many scenes of a man prancing in his underwear does it take to get an Emmy these days anyway? Luckily, Cranston continued taking off his pants in his next show Breaking Bad, enough times, in fact, to finally secure him the Emmy. When he does win, Cranston's look of surprise and graditude is heartwarming.
Greg Garcia
When Greg Garcia won an Emmy for his hilarious sitcom My Name Is Earl, he used his short time on stage to its fullest, and gave a triumphant up-yours to everyone who ever doubted him, insulted his intelligence, or made him scrape gum off their shoes throughout his rise to sitcom greatness. Even God almighty doesn't escape his comedic wrath.
Kate Winslet
It's nice to see an actress with as much award recognition as Kate Winslet get so excited about winning an award, as she didwhen she won for her performance in Mildred Pierce. When Winslet heard her name, she jumped up and down and sported a face full of genuine excitement.
Andy Samberg
Winning an Emmy would be a massive achievement for some people, but Andy Samberg looked like he was confused as to why he was even invited to the ceremony at all. When Samberg and The Lonely Island Crew won an Emmy for "Dick in a Box," he put on his best grin and went on to poke fun at the entire award show with hefty amounts of sarcasm that probably just rubbed salt in the wounds of people who actually really wanted win.
Jon Stewart
Having to watch Jon Stewart win the Emmy for Best Variety Show year after year must be tough, and in 2012, Jimmy Fallon and Stephen Colbert finally hit their breaking point. The two hosts tackled Stewart and tried their best to stop him from reaching the stage in a funny bit of physical comedy. When Stewart finally reached the stage to accept his golden prize, he looked like he just ran a marathon in a tuxedo. His face was visibly winded when he said (at 1:19 in the video), "I'm not in the kind of shape I should be in to do a bit with Jimmy Fallon."
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Hollywood's ideas are cyclical. Example: even though Season 8 of 24 was touted as the final season, there were always rumors that the show would return for a feature film outing. That never happened, but franchise don't disappear: 24 is set to come back next season in limited series form. With Touch cancelled by Fox, Kiefer Sutherland is set to return as counterintelligence operative Jack Bauer in a 13-episode run, reports EW. Does that mean 24 is dropping the real time approach? Will the series even take place after the events of Day 8? Who or what is going on?!
Breathe, 24 fans. There's still lots of time on the clock before solid details regarding the series surface. No need to strap the series writers to any chairs and torture them with broken lamp parts just yet.
In anticipation of the new 24 saga, we've wrangled 10 characters from the show's past we're crossing our fingers return. Since anything goes during an episode of the show, we let our imaginations fly:
Aaron Pierce
The secret service agent became a fan favorite simply because he survived longer than most of the other characters on the show. While he didn't appear in 24's final season, Pierce (played by actor Glenn Morshower) evolved from background White House player to ass-kicking government agent up until Day 7 (in that season, he uncovered an assassination plot tied to the President's daughter, Olivia Taylor). If there's a Presidential character in 24's limited run, then Pierce needs to step back up to guard them.
Bill Buchanan
Unlike Secret Serviceman Pierce, many of 24's most lovable characters kicked the bucket at some point over the course of the show's run. But for every silent countdown indicating the demise of a series regular, we got a double gasp-worthy moment of a dead character's return. So depending on when the new series takes place — it could be a "day" in-between previous seasons — or how wacky it's willing to get, killed off cast members could be resurrected. So we suggest bringing back Bill Buchanan, actor James Morrison's CTU agent who went out with a bang saving Jack's life. He was kind of a wooden suit early on Day 4, but a bit of scruff turned Bill into the wise sage of the CTU team.
Mike Novick
A little bit smarmy, a little bit heartfelt, and a look that is reminiscent of Dick Cheney, Jude Ciccolella's Mike Novick managed to appear in the first two seasons, fall off the grid, then reappear on President Charles Logan's staff in Season 4. Mike's always played both sides of the field. Any good 24 season requires absurd amounts of shadiness and that's the void Mike easily fills. Especially if…
Charles Logan
… a certain diabolical ex-President returns to the cast. Look, I know Logan (Gregory Itzin) shot himself in the head at the tail end of Season 8, but the EMTs explained that he would survive (albeit with a bit of brain damage). Logan is 24's version of Hannibal Lecter: manipulative, soft-spoken, and evil at the core. He can help, he can hinder, but most importantly he takes any mild-mannered thriller plot and turns it on his head. Who knows how his recovery went post-attempted suicide, but it's safe to say Logan could return even crazier than before — and who wouldn't want to see that?
Nina Meyers
Another deceased 24 character I'll believe is dead when she doesn't return for the new limited series. Nina is wicked, and while all the CTU ladies are staples of the show (we love you, Chloe), few chew up scenery like Sarah Clarke's Nina. We haven't seen her since Day 3 when Jack shot her at point blank range. An intelligent person would believe that's it for Nina — but we've watched too much 24 to fully embrace logic. Either Fast Five style reveal that Nina survived the gunshot or set 24 2in an alternative timeline. Find a way, creators.
Sherry Palmer
Speaking of 24 ladies who give the hulking gents a run for their money, how about reviving Sherry Palmer for another turn in the White House? Setting the limited series within the existing timeline might be the only way to work Penny Johnson Jerald back into the terrorist plotting tapestry of the show, but it's worth it to get the scheming First Lady back (and if she comes packaged with David Palmer, great). Sherry added a Manchurian Candidate touch to the early seasons of 24, an element of paranoia lost down the road when the series relied on atomic bombs and global horrors.
Bearded Jack Bauer
Given: Jack Bauer will return for the new 24 season. Less of a given: He'll return looking like he did in the first episodes of Season 6, after being kidnapped and tortured by the Chinese for 20 months. I love me some Jack Bauer power hour, but I also like broken Jack — and I much prefer a guy on the run, a guy under pressure, a guy with nothing left to lose except the mission he puts on himself, then variations of the "troubled Jack" persona that feel forced (see: heroin addiction). When 24picks back up, here's hoping Jack has had his a** kicked. Severely.
Diane Huxley
Will Jack have a love interest in the new 24 series? He may not have time, but just in case, let's bring back Connie Britton's Season 5 character to add a bit of hope to an often bleak landscape. As someone who never really like Audrey Raines, Jack's longtime, post-wife gal pal, I'd be happy to see Jack emotionally reconnect with Diane (even if it's an excuse to add Britton's vibrance to the new series).
Behrooz Araz
Behroooooooooz. The son of a sleeper cell ringleader just wanted to make out with his hot blonde girlfriend, but nooooooo — Dad had to involve him in his plot to blow up nuclear power plants. At the end of Day 4, Behrooz was captured by evildoer Habib Marwan never to be seen again. His conclusion is one of the series big question marks (although answered in non-canonical deleted scenes) and he could make a great hero or villain in the revival of the show.
The Cougar
Run, Kim.
OK, maybe we don't need the infamous Season Two feline to literally make a reappearance in the new run of 24, but we do want something likeKim's run in with a cougar to go down. Levity is important. And adorable, if it comes in the form of a mountain cat.
Bonus: Saul from Homeland
The hit Showtime drama shares a creator with 24 in Howard Gordon, who might just be mad enough to collide his two hit properties into one madcap, Taliban-chasing romp. Jack teaming up with Carrie? Perhaps Mandy Patinkin's Saul could bring them together….
Who do you think should come back for 24 2.0? Voice your returning cast demands in the comments.
Follow Matt Patches on Twitter @misterpatches
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Revolution, you are not an easy show to like. You start too late, first of all, which makes recapping you sans screeners a real energy challenge week-in-week-out. Then you're all "bitch this" and "bitch that," casually knocking down your female characters in a way I know you can write off as "appropriate to the tone of this world" but that still just feels unnecessary. (We even got an implied rape this episode, so…awesome.) You seem willing to sacrifice character authenticity or development at every turn for the sake of some new vaguely defined "mystery," which more often than not feels like "the Princess is in another castle!" text box from Super Mario Bros. The swords. OH MY GOD THE SWORDS. Flashbacks that don't so much stand on their own as they do prop a weakly told present-day story. Aaron. The way Neville's son has just disappeared completely when he looked like he'd play an integral role in this back half of the first half (second quarter?).
But the main reason you're so frustrating, Revolution is because you could be SO GOOD. Your premise is fantastic! The sheer number of stories you could tell set in a world without electrical power is PRACTICALLY ENDLESS. But then you get caught up in these boring explorations of family responsibility (the reason our gang made their way to Philadelphia last night) and friend loyalty and it's ten episodes into the season, with no episodes for four full months, and all it's amounted to is a homoerotic sword fight and a decent-looking by TV standards explosion or two. Dessert! When all we asked for was a light main course to eat alongside.
Then again, an episode with the line, "we're in Philly. There's nowhere safe" is doing more right than wrong and we should count our blessings. Like the very similarly paced Walking Dead, Revolution appears to generally know its way around an opening or closing chapter. Charlie and Co. accomplished their Rescue Danny mission, unexpectedly finding and freeing Charlie's mom in the process. Rachel was able to kill Hauser, Monroe's uber-creepy lieutenant. Aaron got to set off a series of pipe bombs, which I suppose functions as his proving his manhood? Nothing makes any character sense on this show, but explosions mark the moments at which we are supposed to feel something.
No sooner did the gang get into Philly then a) Miles took off on his own to find Monroe and b) they were caught by Neville and thrust into separate confinement. As is his wont, Neville gets off pointing out what an unfeeling CEO-type Aaron must have been before the blackout. Maybe so, Neville, but that was, what, fifteen years ago? 9/11 happened a little over a decade ago in our real world and people talk about it less than you do "the night the lights went out." Find a new story to tell! Thank God Miles showed up when he did to lock the guy in a closet -- another mention of Wired magazine and I wasn't going to make it through the rest of the episode. Thus sparing you any of these thoughts to follow? Every decision has positive and negative ramifications.
"Danny's hair has grown a little bit since the botched train rescue!" I say to the sad pit in my stomach when Charlie is thrown in a cell with her captive brother. Then: did you know that Charlie is short for "Charlotte?" MYSTERIES REVEALED. Monroe delivers his super villain speech to Charlie et al on the power of the talismans (and the depths to which he'll go to retrieve them), but I still don't understand what these characters are even doing. Why does anyone care about military escalation, or the threat of ongoing civil war, when things actually seem pretty okay on the farms (minus your dad getting shot -- sorry, Charlie!) they all live on? How is "it's the right thing to do" enough of a mission statement? Both questions of which are borderline impossible to answer with Charlie's range of acting emotions what it is. You know those "many moods t-shirts" with just one facial expression, repeated? That's Charlie. Pretty girl but move your eyebrows or something.
This episode's flashbacks were all of a piece, and that piece read "BROTHER": Miles and Monroe there for each other in moments of tremendous emotional and/or physical pain, loudly proclaiming their loyalty to one another. It's questionable what new information we learned from these flashbacks -- aside from a joke about being forced to "resort to swords" when ammunition ran out -- but they certainly did their part to set up the eventual confrontation between M&amp;M later in the episode. Miles: ready to kill Monroe for some reason or whatever. Monroe: seemingly ready to do the same because his whole unit thinks he's a pansy who can't do it. The ultimate showdown! And they do face off with swords -- the poor (or electricity-less) man's lightstaber -- after Miles rebuffs Monroe's offer to rejoin the Militia.
I've got a question: WHY WOULDN'T MILES REJOIN THE MILITIA?! It sounds pretty okay! The alternative appears to be fighting for some abstract "freedom" (from a militia group that mostly leaves people alone) while chasing down the barely hinted at possibility that the lights might come back on, something that almost everyone seems to have gotten over fifteen years later. Why not just take a break, everyone?
If I knew more about sword fighting I could compare Miles and Monroe's respective sword fighting styles, but I've got to leave it at "fast and martial artsy" (Miles) vs. "aggressive and deliberate" (Monroe). In any case no one wins. Aaron, who has been waiting the WHOLE episode for one thing to do, sets off the pipe bombs that Nora ("she's really good at blowing stuff up," said Miles way back when, which the writer in me is forced to consider a successful plant and payoff!) gave him. Militia die. An escape from Danny and Rachel's holding facility is created. Rachel hugs her kids, because there's always time to hug your kids, before leading them away from the building. Will Miles make it? Can he rocket away from his aborted fight with Monroe in time? FAKE STAKES FAKE STAKES FAKE STHERE HE IS!
Everyone is running again, always running, until an unfamiliar sound -- a sound not heard since at least Aaron's last Wired cover -- echoes through the area. A helicopter. Armed with mini guns. Just heating up as the camera freezes on Miles' face, "OH SH*T" written all over it.
Coming in 2013: EXPLOSIONS. See you then!
[Photo Credit: Brownie Harris/NBC]
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The multi-talented producer/writer, who has worked on a number of popular American shows, including Lost, Alias, Fringe, and Person of Interest, will be celebrated for his career accomplishments on the small screen.
Awards Chair Michael DeLuca says, "J.J. Abrams has produced some of the most iconic and highest-rated television shows of the past decade and longer, series that have changed the landscape of television. His talent is astonishing, and through his commitment to ingenious storytelling, compelling characters and television programming of the highest quality, he truly lives up to this award's namesake."
Past recipients of the prize include Tom Hanks, Aaron Spelling, and Dick Wolf.

You can't go home again. It's a maxim whose institution in our culture has spanned from Thomas Wolfe's eponymous novel to that first season episode of Battlestar Galactica, but is it a tried and true phrase to live by or a tired cliché rung up by the real estate industry? In the realm of television, many a star has attempted to revitalize past glory on the old stomping grounds, return to the network that launched his or her career in the first place. James Gandolfini, for instance, is returning to HBO (the old home of his historical series The Sopranos) with a new drama pilot titled Criminal Justice.
The Hollywood Reporter reveals that Gandolfini will headline the project, an adaptation of a BBC series that aired in 2008. The story follows the trial of a Pakistani-American murder suspect (Rizwan Ahmed) from inception to conclusion, with Gandolfini playing his second-rate defense attorney Jack Stone. Screenwriter Steven Zaillian (Schindler's List, Gangs of New York, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo) will direct and co-write the pilot with The Wire writer Richard Price.
Although it's not unheard of for a star to find success with a second series on the network responsible for his or her renown, there are definitely motivations to branch out to other venues. Generally speaking, television actors looking for work following a hit series opt to showcase their versatility, rather than promote the idea that they can't do anything we haven't seen from them so far. Famously, the stars of Seinfeld have endured difficulty illustrating what they can do beyond the confines of what NBC's hit sitcom displayed. Both Michael Richards and Julia Louis-Dreyfus sought post-Seinfeld work on NBC, to little success: Richards' detective series The Michael Richards Show only ran for eight episodes in the year 2000, while Louis-Dreyfus' sitcom Watching Ellie only made it to 16 before ratings-provoked cancellation. It should be noted that Louis-Dreyfus has found much greater success on other networks; her CBS sitcom The New Adventures of Old Christine lasted five seasons, in addition to earning the actress an Emmy — a victory that her new HBO comedy Veep might well match.
Coming off of another NBC powerhouse, Friends, actor Matthew Perry has sought work on the network twice since putting Chandler Bing to rest. In 2006, he starred in the Aaron Sorkin drama Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip, which earned critical acclaim but only ran for one season. His new sitcom Go On premiered on the network this season, and has been a contributing factor in NBC's number one ratings status.
A greater certainty in star-network reunions existed in the past — at least on CBS. Responsible for hits like The Dick Van Dyke Show, The Many Loves of Dobie Gillis, and The Bob Newhart Show, CBS granted these series' featured actors Mary Tyler Moore, Bob Denver, and Bob Newhart followup shows The Mary Tyler Moore Show, Gilligan's Island, and Newhart — each of which were monumental success stories.
But with today's "less forgiving" television audiences, always looking for reasons to reject an actor's efforts to explore the new, the adherence to a network is riskier. The pattern suggested above is that when you see a star return to his or her network, you want to see that star doing the thing that instituted the fame. On The Michael Richards Show and Studio 60, the actors in question were too far gone from their Seinfeld and Friends characters. But Go On and the sitcoms of CBS yore reproduced the things we loved about Perry, Moore, Denver, and Newhart. The same can be said for Tony Danza, whose success on ABC's Taxi was transmitted to the network's later sitcom Who's the Boss?. If we're tuning into the same place to watch the same people, we want to see the same thing.
So how will Gandolfini fare on Criminal Justice? Is a jailhouse lawyer close enough to a mafioso to keep audiences engaged in the actor, or will people miss Tony Soprano an opt away from the new series? If viewers are willing to accept Gandolfini as anything other than Tony in the first place, the actor might have a hit on his hands. More than any pattern of which we might take note is the issue of quality. If Criminal Justice is well-written and accessible, then it could well be a hit. With the creative team of Zaillian and Price, and an actor like Gandolfini, quality is indeed promised. Now if only they could find a less generic title...
[Photo Credit: HBO]
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There's an allure to imperfection. With his latest drama Lawless director John Hillcoat taps directly into the side of human nature that draws us to it. Hillcoat finds it in Prohibition history a time when the regulations of alcohol consumption were subverted by most of the population; He finds it in the rural landscapes of Virginia: dingy raw and mesmerizing. And most importantly he finds it in his main character Jack Bondurant (Shia LaBeouf) the scrappy third brother of a moonshining family who is desperate to prove his worth. Jack forcefully injects himself into the family business only to discover there's an underbelly to the underbelly. Lawless is a beautiful film that's violent as hell striking in a way only unfiltered Americana could be.
Acting as the driver for his two outlaw brothers Forrest (Tom Hardy) and Howard (Jason Clarke) isn't enough for Jack. He's enticed by the power of the gangster figure and entranced by what moonshine money can buy. So like any fledgling entrepreneur Jack takes matters into his own hands. Recruiting crippled family friend/distillery mastermind Cricket (Dane DeHaan) the young whippersnapper sets out to brew his own batch sell it to top dog Floyd Banner and make the family rich. The plan works — but it puts the Bondurant boys in over their heads with a new threat: the corrupt law enforcers of Chicago.
Unlike many stories of crime life Lawless isn't about escalation. The movie drifts back and forth leisurely popping in moments like the beats of a great TV episode. One second the Bondurants could be talking shop with their female shopkeep Maggie Beauford (Jessica Chastain). The next Forrest is beating the bloody pulp out of a cop blackmailing their operation. The plot isn't thick; Hillcoat and screenwriter Nick Cave preferring to bask in the landscapes the quiet moments the haunting terror that comes with a life on the other side of the tracks. A feature film doesn't offer enough time for Lawless to build — it recalls cinema-level TV currently playing on outlets like HBO and AMC that have truly spoiled us — but what the duo accomplish is engrossing.
Accompanying the glowing visuals and Cave's knockout workout on the music side (a toe-tapping mix of spirituals bluegrass and the writer/musician's spine-tingling violin) are muted performances from some of Hollywood's rising stars. Despite LaBeouf's off-screen antics he lights up Lawless and nails the in-deep whippersnapper. His playful relationship with a local religious girl (Mia Wasikowska) solidifies him as a leading man but like everything in the movie you want more. Tom Hardy is one of the few performers who can "uurrr" and "mmmnerm" his way through a scene and come out on top. His greatest sparring partner isn't a hulking thug but Chastain who brings out the heart of the impenetrable beast. The real gem of Lawless is Guy Pearce as the Bondurant trio's biggest threat. Shaved eyebrows pristine city clothes and a temper like a rabid wolverine Pearce's Charlie Rakes is the most frightening villain of 2012. He viciously chews up every moment he's on screen. That's even before he starts drawing blood.
Lawless is the perfect movie for the late August haze — not quite the Oscary prestige picture or the summertime shoot-'em-up. It's drama that has its moonshine and swigs it too. Just don't drink too much.
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Don Keefer is not a douchebag — he's just misunderstood! At least that's what we're starting to believe, a conviction aided by the fact that the actor who plays him couldn't be further from the abrasive personality of his character. Theatre veteran Thomas Sadoski (last seen on Broadway opposite Stockard Channing in Other Desert Cities) knows that his character on HBO's media brawl The Newsroom is a little rough on the edges, but after all, what can you expect? Don is a creation of character master Aaron Sorkin, who himself has offered Sadoski plenty of creative challenges when it comes to playing the gruff, discourteous Don.
We went straight to the source to grill Sadoski on what goes into making a character like Don, who presently finds himself at the center of a love triangle with Maggie (Alison Pill) and Jim (John Gallagher, Jr.). Hollywood.com spoke with Sadoski on the show's romantic entanglements, his inspiration for Don (hint: it's a chef!), and what comes next for ACN's grumpiest producer.
HOLLYWOOD.COM: Just last year, you were on Broadway with Alison Pill in The House of Blue Leaves. How did you react when you found out you were both cast in The Newsroom? THOMAS SADOSKI: We actually auditioned on the same day! The waiting room that we were in, to meet with Aaron [Sorkin] and Greg [Mottola], was me and Alison, Sam [Waterston], and Olivia Munn. We were all in the waiting room together, and all of us ended up getting hired. But Alison and I both found out that we were getting this appointment [and] going in roughly at the same time, and then over the next couple of weeks, as they made up their minds and decided who they were going to cast, we were simultaneously trying to check in with each other and not talk about it at all, because we were both so excited and so nervous. When Alison found out that she got hired, of course we were jumping up and down, and then a couple of days later they called up and told me I had gotten cast. Alison has been a friend and a colleague of mine a number of times. I have all the love and respect in the world for her as a human being and as an actor, and it was a really great moment to share with a really great friend.A lot of people are rooting for Maggie and Jim, obviously. What do your family and friends think? Are they rooting for Maggie and Jim, or are they loyal to Don? [laughs] It’s funny because there are some family members who desperately want Don to come around and work it out, and then there are other friends who are totally hedging on me. They’re like, ‘Yeah, you know, it’s great, I think you guys would be really good for each other if you could figure it out….’ They really don’t want to answer the question. They’re so evasive. And look, I get it. Right now I’m the guy who’s standing in the way of the thing that everybody wants to happen in the show. There was a moment when I thought we might see Don and Sloan get together. Could a Don-Sloan hook-up happen down the line? You’d have to talk to Aaron about that. I think that there is something really interesting about the struggle to make this relationship work that Don and Maggie are both engaged in, and I think that as he becomes more and more aware of the fact that his girlfriend is in fact having an emotional affair, things are going to shift and things are going to change.Tell me about Don's bromance with Elliot. I think the best description for that relationship is a complete and total bromance. I think that these are two guys who know exactly who the other is. Elliot even says to Don at one point, “Please get back together with Maggie so you can go back to being the prick that I am used to, rather than the bonus prick that I get when you guys are broken up.” They know exactly who each other is, and they care immensely about each other, and they want the best from and for each other, and I think [that makes it] a great bromance.Every week we sort of peel back another layer to Don, and he becomes more sympathetic. What other parts of Don have yet to be discovered? I wish I knew! One of the exciting things about working with Aaron is that he holds his cards really close to his chest in terms of who he thinks these characters are and where they’ve come from, and you sort of get to find out as he does. I’m excited to see what more there is to Don Keefer. There’s some more stuff that’s revealed as the season goes on. You’ll see some more, hopefully, growth.What inspiration goes into Don? Are there people or producers you’ve worked with in the past whom you've put into the character? It’s tricky because there’s such a negative perception towards Don that I don’t want to mention any names and injure the innocent. [laughs] I think that Don carries himself with this sort of old school swagger of not being the person who’s going to be overly panicked by anything that happens around him, who’s going to remain cool even in the midst of everything that’s going down. I’m a big fan of Anthony Bourdain, and I pulled some of that “no bulls**t,” calm-in-the-middle-of-the-hurricane swagger, from him. But that being said, two weeks ago you have Don attempting to dive through a door, so perhaps he’s not as calm and centered and focused as he likes to tell himself he is.What kind of notes did Aaron give you for the character? Was there anything he said specifically about Don that continues to resonate with you? The thing with the character of Don is that it was originally three different parts. After the table read we did in New York, Aaron combined them to make this one character of Don. Originally, the character of Don was Will’s old executive producer, and that’s all he was, and then there was another character who was Maggie’s boyfriend, and that’s all he was… so Don kind of became this amalgam of like three different people. Aaron has been very clear to me all along in terms of his belief of who the character is. I expressed some concerns to Aaron, 'Am I being too much of a prick?' And I think Aaron’s response was right on. It was that these people are obsessed and myopically focused on their work, and they are utter failures in terms of social convention. He’s not a bad guy. You need to take into perspective all of the things that are going on around him, and he’s trying to do the best that he can do. Aaron was very clear that he didn’t want Don to become dismissible, and so I worked really, really hard at trying to find those moments of humanity early on and grow them so that he can’t just be easily, off-handedly dismissed as, “Oh, he’s just the dick.”Do you think it'd be valid to say that Don is a young Will? I think that’s really smart. I frankly think that Charlie, Will and Don are three generations of the same character. They’re all three of them unrepentant, and as Don and Will continue to grow up, they will sort of grow more towards Charlie, and I think that there’s something really interesting about watching that. Here are these three guys with three very different struggles who are cut from the same cloth in terms of their beliefs about what news is and how it can be, but are hamstrung in three various different ways. Do you have a favorite line of Don's? There’s one that I remember from a couple episodes ago, where Don’s standing in the newsroom and it’s just sort of tangential — I think the camera’s going past me as I’m saying it — but I say, “I’m gonna put somebody’s head through a f**king pyramid,” which I really loved. That was literally at the last second. Aaron came up to me as we were getting ready to shoot that shot [and said], “Uhhh, you're gonna put somebody’s head through a f**king pyramid. Go with that." I got a kick out of that. There's some fun stuff coming up in a couple episodes when we get into the Casey Anthony thing. Spoiler alert.Looking forward, is there anything you want to see Don do? Would he ever be on the air? That thought terrifies me as an actor. I can’t even imagine what that would do to the character! There’s a lot of things I would love to see Don do, but I’m going to trust in my writer and trust that Aaron is going to lead me to the best places.If you were an employee in that newsroom, how would you do? Me? Oh, I wouldn’t last a day!
Follow Marc on Twitter @MarcSnetiker
[Photo Credit: John P. Johnson/HBO]
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